| Research Abstract |
In 1998 and 1999 several expedition trips were conducted to Malaysia, Thailand, and Srilanka : to Kinabaru area, Malaysia in July, 1998 ; to Dipterocarp forest in FRIM, Malaysia in September, 1998 ; to Semengo National Park, Saba, Malaysia in September, 1998 ; to a natural forest near Bangkok in January 1999 ; to natural forests in Chiangmai and Chiangrai in January 1999 ; to Paso, Kuba, and Semengo in Thailand in March 1999 ; to Narachiwat in southern Thailand in March 1999 ; to several forests in Srilanka in January 2000. Using the materials obtained during the above expeditions we tried to determine the specificity of the symbiosis between Dipterocarp and fungi, and between fungi and Drosophila by identifying the species name of these organisms by the method of DNA sequencing. Several chloroplast DNA regions (matK, intergenic regions between trn L-trn F, intron of trn L), and a nuclear gene, gapC were used for Dipterocarpus, and a part of rRNA gene was used for the analysis of fungi. ITS region and amylase were tried for Drosophila. We could establish a good reliable molecular phylogenetical tree of Dipterocarp species using these sequencing data. As for the tree of fungi published trees of rRNA were improved by adding our sequencing data. In most cases no clear specificities were found between symbiotic Dipterocarp species and fungi. The accumulation of more data is essential for obtaining general features of symbiosis. No data are available yet for the relationship between fungi and Drosophila since we are still trying to identify the name of Drosophila.
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